Tilting
We’ve all been there. You’ve been very patient, looking for your spot. Then it happens.
You’re sitting with pocket eights and a very loose aggressive player has just raised the pot in front of you. You call, and the flop comes A83. He fires out a pot-sized bet, so you just call.
The turn is a harmless 5. He bets the pot again. This time you know he’s calling so you push all in. He doesn’t hesitate, and calls immediately. He turns over A4. When a 2 hits on the river, you are left with a sick feeling in your gut.
What you do after that can be the difference between a profitable player and a big loser. Can you stay on your game? Or, does this bad beat freak you out, and get you to make bad plays.
If you find yourself going all in by coming over the top of a raise and a re-raise with pocket nines, you have gone on tilt. Something like QQ will be calling and taking your stack most of the time.
The key is to avoid this knee jerk reaction to the bad beat you took. The bad beat was unavoidable, nothing you could do about it. We all tend to try to quickly get these chips back. We force the action. This is tilting.
One of the best solutions is to get your ass away from the table! If you’re not in a hand, you can’t screw up. Once you feel you have your composure back, sit down and play good poker.
Remind yourself that you had played great in that losing hand. You can’t control the fact that he got super lucky. There is almost always some chance you will get hit with a bad beat. It’s rare that your opponent is drawing dead. Therefore, you need to get used to having this happen.
This type of event is compounded if you’re running bad. When you on a long losing steak it seems that anything you do goes wrong. Opponents make bad calls, and suck out on you.
Your good hands run into better ones. Your opponents make bad calls, and hit their draws. Then, you finally get all you chips in with AA versus 99, only to see two nines hit the flop.
It starts to feel rigged. If you play online, you really know what I mean. The numbers will even out over time. This has to be true. Stop playing if you don’t agree with this statement.
To profit at the tables, you need to play good poker when things are going bad. Things will go bad. If you don’t play well when they are, you give away your profits. Don’t tilt, stay cool and keep your bank roll growing.
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